St Jude's Mapperley Archive Blog

Good Morning All! For the Monday Mail this week, I'd like to send a link to Glen Scrivener's new Easter Poem (animation on Youtube). Here's the poem in full: The Israelites in thirsty lands, trod burning sands with desperate craving, no longer slaving for Egyptian masters, now by grace they're free to face this fresh disaster -- starving in a barren place. Until the Bread of Heaven fell like morning dew each day anew, and to these folks complaining, every day the Bread sustaining, to lead them all their journey through. Fast forward 1500 years: a Man appears, stands tall among His peers, And feeds the desert crowds without ado, A supernatural déjà vu. And having won the mob's attention then He makes His bold contention: He IS the Bread of old, the One foretold to feed us and through our wilderness to lead us. Could His claim be true? It's Thursday Night, an upper room, a supper strewn with broken bread, Then Jesus stands, a loaf in hand and says: THIS...

Good Morning! Yesterday morning, we looked at John 12:1-11, which is the story of Mary anointing Jesus' feet with perfume that cost a year's wages. We saw that Mary's grateful, responsive, loving, extravagant, disgraceful love was exactly the right response to Jesus, even though it left her with no money, no provision for the future and her reputation in tatters. In contrast, Judas was shown to be hiding his real sin behind trying to look pious. One of the ways we applied it was by thinking about whether we hold back from worshipping God for fear of what other people think, whether that's when singing at church or when speaking to our friends at work or at the pub, or even whether we're sometimes, like Judas, people who sit on the sidelines and snipe at those who are putting their hearts into worshipping God. We also saw how Mary's action predicts what Jesus is about to do – that she becomes the servant who wash...